Secrets
by PoeticLife
Summary: "Guinevere is the one who knows all of Camelot's secrets. She is also the one who worries the most. This is no coincidence." / Gwen knows exactly what's going on around her city, and she fears for Gaius, Merlin, Arthur, and Morgana. Oneshot.


Guinevere is the one who knows all of Camelot's secrets. She is also the one who worries the most.

This is no coincidence.

Gaius is the first one she really sees. She's far from an idiot, and is possibly the most observant person in the citadel. It's not a very tricky thing to guess that he supports magic and would see it returned to Camelot.

There are small things - the way he tells her to run unnecessary errands like fetching water from the furthest tap - that make her realise that he wants her out of the room, so that she couldn't be called an accomplice to sorcery.

(She loves him for it, even if her heart jolts and her stomach twists every time he tells her to do some insignificant, time-consuming task outside of the physician's chambers.)

The second one she learns to worry about is Merlin. No one else is half as compassionate or as reckless, and a kingdom she has come to realise is not as just as she'd like to believe is the worst place for him. They have both been accused of sorcery, and while she had been terrified for herself and the people she was leaving, Merlin seemed somehow entertained by it all behind the fear.

He is going to get himself killed with his own kindness, or he will learn that trusting too quickly is a weakness and close his heart forever. Both options make her want to sob.

(There's something extremely odd about him, something in that grin, that makes her wonder what he's hiding that makes him act so oddly. She hopes he'll tell her one day, but she doubts he will.)

Arthur was next, and all the bravado in the world can't make her forget the way he had put that emphasis on the last syllable of her name. He pretended that people were beneath him to protect himself from caring too much.

His father had a habit of trying to execute the people he should reward, and if it were a few years ago, she knows he would have pushed it out of his mind and refused to look in the accused's eyes. Now, thanks to some newfound wisdom, he thinks more about what his own opinions are.

 _"I will always love you,"_ he had said desperately, struggling against the guards holding him. Those two minutes, though torturous, were the proof that Arthur was different.

(She worries that someday, he will decide not to court her - not because she will be lonely and heartbroken, though she certainly will be. She worries because it means that he has given in or been forced into marrying someone who does not love him or Camelot.)

Morgana is the one she used to worry about most. Skills with a sword and a glare that would send any sane man running kept her physically safe, but it wasn't her body that Gwen worried about. She used to have terrible nightmares of events that happened later when she was wide awake, frightening her badly.

She hasn't had a nightmare in a while yet. It seems odd, that a traumatic experience like being kidnapped should keep her nightmares away and somehow teach her how to smirk coldly. All her rage-fuelled plots and small rebellions seem to have been dismissed and a new sweetness found that made her shiver sometimes. Gwen isn't one to question miracles, but Morgana's return may not be as miraculous as she'd first thought.

(She's scared for Camelot and what treachery from Morgana could mean, but what scares her more is the thought that she might never have her best friend back.)

Camelot is full of dangers and the walls outside the citadel will one day crumble. She hopes with all of her being that this will not come to pass, that Gaius will find a way to stay in the king's favour, that Merlin will find a way to tell them whatever he is hiding, that Arthur will find a way to see his father's weaknesses and overcome them, that Morgana will find a way to realise exactly why turning traitor is the worst thing she could do.

Guinevere is the one who knows all of Camelot's secrets. She is also the one who worries the most.

This is no coincidence.


End file.
